Writing Resources
The Russian Civil Wars 1916 1926 Ten Years That Shook the World 2015 contemplates the events which preceded the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the ramifications on not only Russia but Europe and Asia too Smele in arguing the Russian Revolution was a continuum of crisis rather than one bloody occurrence posits the transnational and ethnic aspects of the struggles of this tumultuous decade which has been defined in this book as the Russian civil wars Smele s work is split in to six with each chapter taking on the form of a different set of years these further breakdown into larger context into systematic units Smele s title alone brings three matters which epitomizes this work the first thing which stands out is Russia which is in inverted commas secondly Smele pluralises the event s and thirdly Smele places the date of events within 1916 to 1926 Holquist s continuum of crisis follows as war revolution and civil war the rhetoric of civil war before the revolution was thus born and Smele builds upon this predating Russia's civil war to one year before the October revolution when an anti Russian uprising in Central Asia during the summer of 1916 in a rebellion that anticipated the later Basmachi movement resisted forced mobilisation into labour battalions to service the Russian Army Smele s use of inverted commas in his title implies that conflict was both an internal and external threat in the civil wars which the Bolsheviks were threatened by and had to act upon
